Recently, NPR (National Public Radio) had a phone interview with author Andrew Keen in which he and NPR host John Ydstie discussed Keen’s new book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture”.  It was interesting to read about how Keen believes Web 2.0 (which includes things like Google, Youtube, and Myspace) is ruining our culture by reducing the amount of cultural gatekeepers on the Web.  Cultural gatekeepers are those entities that decide what kind of information should be presented to the public on the web and by not having these entities in place, Keen argues that “all we have is opinion chaos,[and] a cacophony of amateurs” who “undermine the authority and expertise and professionalism of mainstream media.”  This is detrimental to our culture because it fails to provide a universally and ethically acceptable template for culture.  Furthermore, Keen argues against the notion that these trends are simply the first happenings of the downfall of capitalism and that we should let these things happen because they may in the end bring about something new and positive for our society.  Keen states that “we created this technology. We need to manage its consequences”, which could also be interpreted as Keen suggesting the internet be governed.  This notion is intriguing because of the recent news surrounding SOPA, legislation that tries to directly govern the internet.  I think that the dichotomy of opinions on this matter are important.  That being said, I think social media sites like twitter and facebook have shown that the internet cannot be governed at all.  I believe, as I think many do, that the concept of the Internet is so immense at this moment, that to try and impose rules and regulations upon it would be ineffective.  I believe that we need to simply watch the transformation of the Web and try and guide it and those using it, toward an ethical and culturally positive avenue.

Read the Podcast Transcript here…

Author David Pogue of the New York Times posted an article having to do with defining what internet culture actually is.  Pogue tweeted one day that he had no idea what being “RickRolled” meant.  RickRolled refers to an internet prank by which people who are trying to watch a certain video on youtube or some other media, instead get redirected to a video of Rick Astley’s 1987 music video of “Never Gonna Give You Up”.  Pogue immediately received a number of tweets commenting on how behind the times he was by not knowing about RickRoll.  Pogue, in response, challenged his followers to come up with a list of the 100 most important web trends, videos, or ideas that anyone should know if they want to call themselves web savvy.  Most of the videos had to do with mean spirited humor, while others were centered around creatively witty episodes or funny animals.  What was so interesting to me personally after reading this article was that ok, we have this amazing technology called the Internet that allows us to stay interconnected from anywhere in the world.  That being said, the “Culture of the Internet” is composed of this?  The top 100 list for the internet savvy consumer is composed of a bunch of mean humor and animals joking around?  Don’t get me wrong, I love this stuff the same as the next person.  I’ve spent hours zoning through youtube looking at videos.  But it just seems like such a waste.  Or maybe this is only the beginning stages for the evolution of “Internet Culture”.  Something to think about.

Read the article here…

On Henry Jenkins webpage, titled “Confessions of an Aca-Fan”, Jenkins performed an interview with author Ted Striphas in which the two discussed the transformation of Barnes and Nobles over the years.  One of the main questions that Jenkins posed to Striphas was what is going to happen to the modern day brick and mortar bookstores now that services like Amazon are provided?  Striphas did not believe that he was capable of answering such questions, however he did elaborate on one of the downsides of having a bookstore online.  I few years ago, Amazon ended up deleting a number of pirated copies of George Orwell’s “1984” off of their customer’s Kindles.  Striphas compares this to the notion that a modern day bookstore can just come into your house and take back a book that you purchased legally.  It’s an interesting comparison because it calls into question the fact that all Kindles are linked back to Amazon, creating an enormous network of literature that Amazon has more or less full control over.  It seems that this is another example of privacy and convenience colliding on the Internet.  It will be interesting to see how the relationship between these two entities plays itself out in the future.

What was most interesting to me in today’s reading in Cory Doctorow’s novel, “For the Win”, was the organization of the gold farmer workers into a Union called the Webblies.  It was an interesting notion to contemplate because its one that I never actually thought of before.  Because the internet provides everyone with a means of interacting instantly, it would be the perfect medium for organizing a group of workers, like the way it is being employed in the novel.  Furthermore, it was fascinating that other unions were unable to see the potential in possibly utilizing such a network.  That being said, I understand that it would be hard to situate dye manufacturers with gold farmers in a union next to one another because of the preconceived notions about the two industries.  But I still think that Doctorow offers a very interesting take on the power of the internet as a means of organizing and bringing about social change.

Read “For the Win” here…

In terms of actually narrating my podcast at the Farmer’s Market, I felt a little awkward walking around talking to my recorder at first.  However, the beauty of that particular Market is that everyone is talking, interacting and listening to the music that it was easy to shrug off the self-consciousness and get in the flow of what I was trying to describe.  However, one of the things that I noticed when I came back and started editing my podcast was that there was a lot of background noise because it was so windy.  Learning how to fade out the background noise and introduce a song in order to obscure some of the interference was the hardest part of this project for me personally.

I actually really enjoyed working on this project because I have never actually made a podcast before.  Furthermore, writing the essay first and then going out to the Farmer’s Market after gave me another insight into the workings of the Market itself as it went on around me.

Listen to my Podcast here… Patrick’s Podcast on the Farmer’s Market

After reading Part 1 of Corey Doctorow’s “For the Win”, the story that interested me the most had to do with Mala and the game Zombie Mech.  In this particular story, Mala is a gifted girl who plays the online game Zombie Mech extremely well.   Mala is so good in fact, that a representative from Zombie Mech appears in the small game cafe where Mala plays and asks her to hunt “gold hoarders” in the game.  These gold hoarders accumulate a large amount of in game credits and then sell them to other players for actual money, thereby turning a profit.  Mala is therefore recruited to find these gold hoarders and destroy them and take their fortunes before they can sell them to potential buyers.

What’s so interesting with Doctorow’s writing is that when you are reading the stories, it’s easy to become immersed in the world of the game along with main character and forget that there is action continuing outside of the gameplay of the characters within the story.  So when the representative of Zombie Mech, Mr. Banerjee, appears and offers Mala a job, the clash of the real world and Mala’s game world is made all the more apparent.  What’s also interesting here, is that in virtual reality, Mala has created a means of making a viable income and supporting her family financially.  It’s amazing to me that we are at a point now where we can literally make money out of literally nothing.

I feel that it’s also important to recognize the kinds of relationships being built within this story.  Mala’s friends jokingly call her “General Robotwalla” because of her excellence in gameplay, however by the end of the story, these same friends are termed by Mala as her army and even salute her.  These relationships, that were created in a virtual reality have spilled over and taken root within real life interactions as well.

Read “For the Win” here…

After reading Ian Bogost’s article titled “Persuasive Games: The Proceduralist Style” I couldn’t help but have a few questions.  Maybe it was my unfamiliarity with the rhetoric and vocabulary being used to describe his concept, but I felt that Bogost’s article needs a bit of unpacking before I can attempt to provide any commentary on it.

First of all, the concept of a Proceduralist Style is in reference to games that lie between the categories of the abstract genre (Tetris) and that of the “concrete” or realistic games (SimCity).  This quote describes the difference the best:

“Games like Go and Tetris are abstract; if they have any aboutness, it is limited to the experience of the system itself. One can make representational claims about these games (as Janet Murray did of Tetris in Hamlet on the Holodeck), but only in an overtly metaphorical way.

By contrast, games like SimCity and Madden are concrete; they deal very clearly with specific subjects and activities, in this case urban planning and American football.

Proceduralist games sit between these two poles. Their systems characterize some aboutness that is not an accident of genre or convention, but one deliberately selected — often from personal experience.”

Ok so creators of Proceduralist games want there to be real, concrete activities or subjects, but these stem from some abstract personal experience or emotion.  Therefore, Proceduralist games suggest a artistic medium in which people “play” a game that doesn’t necessarily have a set goal or rules, and then see how they feel about it.  I guess for me, the best way to think about it is that Proceduralist games attempt to entice some form of deeper introspection, internalization and/or analyzation of the games themes that aren’t present in more “concrete or abstract” games, like those mentioned previously.

Now of course this is exactly what art attempts to do, bring about a reaction to a piece and cause the experiencer to interact with it on a deeply personal level.  This is obviously an extremely generalized definition for art, but it holds within it the basis of the question being asked I think.  Mainly, is it possible to call Proceduralist games art because of their ability to bring about this experience with it’s audience that is comparable to other media and forms of contemporary art, or socially accepted form of artistry.  My answer to that question…..who knows….our notions of constitutes are are ever changing from generation to generation.  So whose to say what is art and what isn’t…

Read the full article here: ArtGames

For today’s reading I must say that was extremely wary when the introduction included the statement that

“We argue that SL Residents participate in an Activity System, engaging in myriad activities (e.g. language classes) which provide structured environments that generate both intended and unintended outcomes (e.g. learning) for participants.1 We found, paradoxically, that although participation in SL is a sedentary activity involving physical isolation, in many ways active participation and virtual travels in SL also enhanced Residents’ intercultural literacy as they connected with other geographically dispersed participants.”

However, that being said, I discovered, to my surprise, some interesting ideas that surface when discussing cultural growth and exchange within Second Life.  The main one being formally scheduled language classes.

After reading the portion of the study that suggests because there is such a diverse demographic of Users on SL, there of course would be number of different languages spoken within the virtual world.  However, what I wasn’t prepared for was the notion that language classes would therefore flourish within this virtual realm as an outcome of that diverse demographic.  ESL classes, as the study states, are on the rise in SL because of the virtual worlds bias toward English as being the dominant language found in SL.  It’s fascinating to me that you can sit down at a computer and possibly explore a new language and even learn to speak it within the confines of a virtual world like SL.    Now I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but the fact that it is happening is extremely interesting to me.  Therefore, I’ll reserve passing judgement on SL for now….

Read the entire article HERE…

So my first experience with Second Life can be described as uneventful, to say the very least.  After creating my avatar, a giant bunny that goes by the name of “Intercult”-Internet Culture, I was dropped into the game world.  After following the arrows on the floor around in seemingly large circle, I began to get a feel for the movement controls and the way that my avatar interacted with the virtual world around it.  I noticed that you could select different movements that range from walking and running to flying.  That being said I wasn’t able to figure out how to fly to my supreme disappointment.

After following the arrows I arrived at a portal that by walking into it, transported me to a mountainous landscape where I had to attempt to fine red, yellow, and orange crystals.  Safe to say that I promptly gave up after I a failed search attempt of 10 minutes or so took place, after which I returned to the previous introductory world and logged off.

As for the hobbies and interests of my avatar, I haven’t really thought about it much.  I mean, he is a giant rabbit, reminds me of the character Donny Darko but I don’t really think I want that personality to be a role model for my avatar.  I’ll figure something out I’m sure but if anyone has any helpful insights or suggestions I would appreciate it : ).